SINGAPORE -- Now many more Apple users here can pay in stores with their iPhones and Apple Watches.
Five banks in the country -- DBS, OCBC Bank, POSB, Standard Chartered and UOB -- announced on Wednesday they had started to support Apple Pay on their credit and debit cards.
Together with American Express, which launched together with Apple Pay here a little over a month ago, the six banks collectively cover the vast majority of the island's card users, with over 80% of the cards issued by Visa and MasterCard. Some popular banks like Citibank and Maybank have not yet started supporting the service here.
It's not likely that Apple Pay was utilised a lot across the country in the past month, since fewer than 5% of the credit and debit cards in Singapore are issued by Amex.
There are about 15,000 contactless retail points available in Singapore.
Clement Teo, a senior analyst covering marketing with Forrester, said there's a large base of Singaporeans that have grown accustomed to tap-and-pay retail at checkout counters with their contactless credit cards, so this behaviour should roll over to Apple Pay more naturally.
Visa told us last month that about a third of Visa transactions here are already done by tapping, and this volume grows at 70% each year.
Teo also pointed out that Apple fans who rely on multiple devices might find Apple Pay coming in handy in situations where they can choose to pay via their Apple Watches or iPads.
Lifting the S$100 cap
For now, contactless payments are mostly restricted to smaller ticket purchases, because of a government-regulated S$100 ($72) spending cap per transaction. But one local bank, UOB, said it's lifted the cap for its users at about 2,000 of its 10,000 payment terminals in Singapore, and plans to do so for all of them by end-2017.
This means contactless spending at these terminals will be more similar to regular transactions, and only limited by the card owner's credit limit.
The bank said it's expecting at least 20% of its cards' transactions to be contactless by 2020.
Singapore is the sixth country to get Apple Pay, which was launched in the U.S. in 2014.
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